Geodesic
by safa'at keruth
Summary: AU. History repeats itself, or so they think. If their worlds are running parallel but colliding, if the immortal exist throughout all of time, then what is real and what is not? #contest shadow, round ten; darkfic#


**Round 10 **of** The Yu-Gi-Oh Fanfiction Contest: **_Shadowshipping (Yami Yugi x Shizuka)_. WARNING: Yami/Shizuka, Yugi/Shizuka, and others; implied yaoi, selfcest, and one foursome; kissing, two giant innuendos, and mildly suggestive/disturbing imagery at the very end. Don't like, _please _don't read.

_I repeat_: Disturbing implications at the end, and a turn into darkfic. This is _T_ for a reason.

Disclaimer: I don't own YGO.

Much love to **Defenestration of the Mind **and **the7joker7** for beta'ing, and to **Doubleplusgoodduckspeaker** for informing me of Ancient Hawaiian weaponry. Note that I screwed with the mythology a _lot_ here, and that much of the fic's key concepts are not Hawaiian canon. Enjoy!

* * *

**Geodesic**

* * *

Shizuka nearly choked as she stepped out of the plane and into the warm Hawai'ian air, the humidity clogging her breath and making her feel for one heart-pounding instant that she was going to suffocate on it.

Yugi patted her back as she doubled over, and she could imagine his slightly alarmed but amused smile even with her eyes closed. "You'll get used to it by the time you've spent a few days here, I promise."

"Good," Shizuka managed, straightening, "because I'm dying here." She forced herself to breathe in deeply and frowned at the sun that was setting in a glow of gold on the horizon, as if it were its fault that Hawai'i was so warm—which, in part, it certainly was. She brushed strands of long auburn hair that had slipped from her ponytail out of her eyes, straightening her shirt in an attempt to appear more tidy.

"There should be a taxi waiting for us once we collect our luggage," Kaiba announced, striding across the runway and toward the airport without so much as a glance back, looking no worse for wear after the long airplane flight.

Otogi whistled lowly, his carrier bag slung over one shoulder as he hopped onto the pavement, and his clothes conversely disheveled from the way he had slept sprawled across two chairs, but managing to make it seem intentional. "Somebody has a stick up his ass today," he remarked, half-skipping to catch up with Kaiba and elbowing him conspiratorially. "Haven't you heard of the beach, Kaiba? Relaxation? Taking a break?"

Kaiba halted and scowled down at his black-haired companion while Shizuka and Yugi hid their laughter behind their hands; there was nothing Otogi enjoyed more than provoking him. "This is a college-funded research trip, Otogi," he said. "We're not here to fool around."

"Oh, please." Otogi rolled his eyes. "Like you expect to do anything educational when we're in _Hawai'i_ of all places..."

"The mythology is really interesting," Shizuka offered tentatively. "And the volcanoes—"

"—are _my_ area of specialty," Kaiba interrupted.

"And mine," Otogi piped up, grinning.

Kaiba raised his eyebrows. "You hardly count as a _specialist_."

"I was chosen to come on this lovely trip with the rest of you nerds, so I'd imagine that at least the professors think so." He pushed open the door to the airport with his shoulder, adding something that Shizuka could not hear as she stepped in and was immediately engulfed by a wave of air conditioning.

There were palm trees planted in pots even inside the building, a fountain gurgling softly in the center. Masses of people rushed around them, eager to reach their flights or their luggage or their families. The floor beneath their feet was made of colored tiles, forming neatly interlocking geometric shapes but barely visible beneath the swarm of couples and weary parents grasping firmly onto their children's hands.

All in all, much to Shizuka's disappointment, it was no more than a normal airport.

"Hoping for something more exotic?" Yugi murmured, leading the way to the baggage claim with the ease of someone who had been there many times before. Yugi was a veteran of these trips, a student who had graduated college early and was periodically returning to the islands in order to research for his PhD. And he was Shizuka's friend—or rather, a friend of her brother—who had agreed to come along on their trip in order to help her. "Don't worry; once we get to some of the villages who still follow the old customs and see the _volcanoes_"—here his expression grew brighter, and Shizuka mused suddenly that he would have done well in her major—"it'll seem much more exciting."

She flushed, embarrassed that he had understood her surprise—really, she should have known better than to think modern-day Hawai'i would be the glorious land of clansmen and _kapu_ that its ancient counterpart had been. "Thanks."

Yugi smiled at her, kind, and she smiled back; he was the sort of person whose happiness caught on with everyone around him. "No problem."

The airport blurred, and Shizuka blinked, confused, as the palm tree before her eyes began to splinter along its trunk, cracks running up it with a terrible creaking sound, like the wood was being bent slowly under invisible hands. It bowed low toward the ground, its long leaves brushing at her hair, and she froze, petrified, as a voice that resonated deep within the earth under her feet spoke:

"_Welcome back, Aumakua."_

"W-what?" Shizuka whispered, tilting her head up carefully and staring into the deep green of tree. And for a second, she thought she could see a face superimposed upon its surface, the face of an old man who smiled at her and knowingly repeated, _"Aumakua. We are pleased to see you once more."_

"Oh," Shizuka said faintly.

* * *

"Shizuka?" Yugi's voice shook her out of her thoughts, and she glanced up from where she had been sitting on the backseat of the car Kaiba had rented and was presently driving, rereading a passage on the recent volcanic activity of Kilauea—or rather, _attempting_ to reread it. The neatly typed words were blurring before her eyes in favor of the memory of the strange scene at the airport, when the palm tree had bent down and called her _Aumakua_.

Afterward, she had blinked and the palm tree had returned to its normal state, and Yugi had been telling her to catch up to Otogi and Kaiba, who were already a dozen feet ahead.

"_Are you okay?" Yugi asked her, concern in his voice._

_Shizuka nodded quickly, casting a wary glance up at the tree. "Yugi, did you by any chance see that tree move?"_

_The concern heightened by a factor of ten, and Shizuka very nearly winced—it had been the wrong thing to ask. "No, why?_

_She attempted a smile. "Nothing. I guess I'm just tired."_

"Yes?" she said.

Yugi gestured toward the window, which was currently showing that they were on top of a cliff that dropped off steeply toward the ocean below—landslides, Shizuka remembered, caused by sudden disturbances in the seafloor... "We're here."

She eagerly set the papers aside and grabbed her backpack from beside her, stepping out of the car and squinting into the sun that reflected in glittering lines off the water. The wind blew hard against her, whipping her hair around her face, and she suppressed an ironic laugh as she tied it back; her professor would no doubt have been horrified if he'd known that she was walking around with loose hair when she was about to visit an active volcano.

"Did you know that the Ancient Hawai'ians believed that their goddess of volcanoes lived in a crater here?" Yugi said conversationally, walking up behind her and pointing to their right. "It's that one over there, Halemaʻumaʻu."

"The goddess is Pele, right?" Shizuka said; Pele was famous among geologists as well as anthropologists, since so much of the field of volcanology had been named after her.

Yugi nodded. "Stories say that her elder sister was afraid that her ambition would destroy their home, so she chased Pele out and killed her so that her bones formed the hills on Kahikinui and her spirit escaped to live in Hawai'i. There's also the less violent version, but we, as anthropologists, are always more interested in the violent one..."

Shizuka laughed this time, and looked in the direction Yugi was pointing to see the very edge of a crater there, uneven and made of dark brown rock. She thought that she could spot clouds hovering there for a moment, and frowned—were they really that high up?

She blinked once more, rubbing at her eyes to dispel the weariness that had resulted from reading in the half-lit back of Kaiba's car; she was much too sleep-deprived, it seemed, and a full night's rest was not dispelling it.

She opened them, and gaped openly at the mountain that she saw when she had opened them.

It was black with newly hardened lava, more pouring golden-orange from its top, a cloud of white rising lazily into the sky above it. She could feel the warmth, literally _feel_ the burning on her face and neck and see the shimmer of heat haze in the air. And for a moment, Shizuka thought there was a woman's face in the shape of the half-destroyed volcano, a face that smiled at her before opening its mouth and _breathing_—

When it breathed, the volcano rumbled around it, choking up more soot and molten rock_—_rock that streamed down its side and hit the salt water with a hiss and hardened into more rock there.

"_She is building the island,"_ a voice whispered, then shouted: _"Run; she is building the island!"_

"Shizuka!" Yugi's voice was slightly alarmed, shattering the scene around her and forcing her to refocus on his face. There was no cloud hovering in the crater anymore, no face that appeared in the recesses of the mountain, no rain of ashes around her.

"Sorry," she said quickly, ignoring the odd look that Otogi had given her from ten feet ahead. "I just..."

"Blanked out?" Otogi suggested easily, and she turned to him, startled, to see his eyes staring straight back at her with sharp intent. "Don't worry, it happens to me all the time."

Kaiba snorted, only sparing an "I would imagine" before moving on. Yugi continued with him, casting a glance at Shizuka over his back, and Otogi dropped behind to walk with her as they hiked up the side of the mountain.

"Thanks for that," Shizuka said quietly.

He gave her a grin. "No problem." They continued on in silence for a moment, until he added, "Have you ever hoped that the volcano would erupt on you and kill you, Shizuka?"

It was such a strange question that she stopped and frowned at him for a moment, at the odd gleam in his green eyes as they held hers. "No, not really. Why do you ask?"

He shrugged, his gaze drifting down toward the waves that crashed onto the stone below them, one hand fisting as he held it slightly away from his body—it was a tentative gesture, his movements slow, as if he were testing the full mobility of his limbs but afraid of pain. "I thought that you might, knowing the games you play with the Aumakua, _Hina_." Quicker than she could see, his hand rose and grabbed her arm, fingers turning white against her skin and his mouth splitting into a wide grin. "I've got you here, haven't I?"

Shizuka attempted to jerk out of his grip, not liking the way her heart was pounding. "What are you talking about?"

He raised an eyebrow coolly, not letting go. "You know who I am."

"No," Shizuka said, frantic, "I _don't_!"

They stared at each other for a moment, Shizuka's breathing rapid and Otogi's so soft she could neither hear nor see it, until he released her and she hurried away from him, half-running to catch up with Kaiba and Yugi.

Though she did not look back, she knew that he was watching her retreat.

And when she chanced to glance down, she saw that a part of the cliff had crumbled and lay half-exposed in the water, and that, somehow, frightened her more than anything else had.

* * *

Yami remained kneeling as the blood trickled down the back of his neck and sweat beaded on his forehead, the pressure of the stone against his skin enough to force him to freeze in place.

"Dead." The word echoed through the clearing that he was in, spoken by a burly man with sun-paled blond hair, the ax lifting. "Get up."

Yami straightened, picking up his own weapon from where it lay next to him on the ground and facing his opponent, though he had to look up to speak eye-to-eye; Keith was a tall man, and Yami was shorter than he might have liked.

Keith folded his arms, eying Yami with his usual gruffness. "What did you do wrong?"

Yami sighed. "I dropped my weapon."

His opponent jabbed his chest with a finger, scowling now. "Damn right you did. How am I supposed to train you to become Ali'i, a proper clan leader, if you cannot even protect yourself in battle and you have no willingness to learn properly?"

"Not that Atem will mind if I abdicate," Yami grumbled under his breath.

"Do not speak of him that way," Keith said, even more stern than before if that was possible. "You only do the gods and yourself dishonor if you slander your king so."

"He hates me," Yami said. "Just because he and my grandfather are on bad terms and have been rivals for years now—"

"_Yami."_ There was a warning in Keith's voice, a tone that he used only when they both knew that Yami had gone too far. He snapped his mouth shut quickly—his trainer in a temper was, admittedly, terrifying—and Keith sighed heavily. "What with all that you say, I'm surprised that he hasn't banished you to Kilauea sooner..."

"If he did," Yami burst out fiercely, unable to control himself, "I would be glad to go, glad to speak to Pele and ask what I may to do appease her—"

Keith snorted, holding his ax up to the light of the setting sun and inspecting it critically from all angles. "Those are fools' dreams. Do not distract yourself with them."

"I would rather travel to the summit of Kilauea than have to serve under Atem," Yami said stubbornly, glancing out at the ocean that lay at the feet of the sloping hill they had been practicing on. He nevertheless took a seat on a nearby rock, placing his weapon on his knee and running a finger along the edge.

"He is king by will of the gods, Yami," Keith reprimanded, hitting the edge of his weapon against the rock Yami was sitting on and observing its unblemished state with satisfaction. "And it is not your place to question that."

Yami muttered a vague sound of assent and obligingly fell into silence.

"Kaua'i's yearly festival is in a week," Keith said finally. "And so is the ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi."

Yami glanced up at him, surprised at the sudden shift in topic. "And who will be sacrificed by Atem's _kahuna _this year?"

Keith shrugged. "He will use the same method of choice as he has before."

Yami's eyebrows rose at the coolness in his companion's tone. "Really, Keith, and you are not concerned about your family there?"

"If they die, it is because they chose to," Keith said.

Yami frowned and set his weapon down, even as he felt that he should be backtracking with it held out to ward off his friend. "What happened to you, Keith?"

Faster than he could see, Keith had brought his sword up to Yami's neck and was holding it there, barely touching his skin.

Yami froze in place once more, his eyes flickering up to meet Keith's. His mind was racing as quickly as his pulse, the words of his grandfather's training repeating over and over in his mind: _A leader must be strong. A leader must always appear strong._ "You dare attack your future chief?" he whispered, hands reaching back slowly to brace himself against the rock.

Keith gave a harsh laugh. "I have no chief."

Yami's hand fisted on a sharp stone behind him, and he knew that he could bring it up quicker than Keith could react and kill his former friend; Keith had taught him that much. But he paused before he did, because his eyes were slit-pupiled and unnatural, and he knew, somehow, that this was not his friend.

_Killing him is what Atem would do._

"Who are you?" Yami whispered—he had heard tales of the great _kahunas _of the past, of those people who served as mediums for the gods to possess at will, and though he had not thought that Keith could ever be one... then again, the gods worked in unusual ways.

Keith's smile widened. "An excellent observation. I am Kahōʻāliʻi. Who are you?"

"I am Yami, grandson of Solomon."

"No. You are not."

Keith released him, dropping the sword, and Yami fell back onto the rock he was sitting on, sudden vertigo making his head dizzy.

As the sky swooped around him, he thought he saw for a moment a cloud of dark gray rising into the air, the face of a woman laughing at him from within the great mountain of Kilauea, and a girl no older than him with eyes of gray and hair the red-brown of the Akepa bird's feathers, staring directly at him and yet not _seeing _him, flanked by a black-haired boy with Keith's possessed eyes.

Then he blinked, and it disappeared.

* * *

_Shizuka blinks and turns around—she is standing at the top of Kilauea, staring down at the open crater that is barren of life, looking like nothing so much as an image of the surface of some lonesome planet. But the air is no longer the humid Hawai'ian warmth that she is accustomed to; instead, it is comfortably cool, the wind making her shiver when it blows through her hair._

_She breathes the crisp smell of the crater deeply, wrinkling her nose as the musty scent of dust is mixed in with it—the smell that she associates with forgotten attics and closets that have not been opened for many years. How can it feel like that here, where the breeze blows freely and carries dirt over the edge of the volcano?_

"_I have seen you before."_

_She whirls to her left and is confronted with the strange image of a teenager no older than she is, shirtless and staring at her with equal bemusement. "Who're you?"_

_He straightens with something that is not quite arrogance. "My name is Yami, and I am the grandson of Solomon, chief of Maui. What is your name?"_

"_Shizuka. If you're the chief of Maui's grandson, then why are you on Hawai'i?" Shizuka asks, curious, deciding to ignore for now that there are no chieftains anymore, that the tradition has passed; she has learned through the years to let strange dreams be._

_Yami looks at her oddly, and she attempts to suppress her urge to blush as his eyes sweep with a sort of fascination over her sleepwear—shorts and a tank top that is so loose by now that she can feel one of the straps slipping off her shoulder._

_She does not have the odd 'sense' of Yami that she usually has with strange people who appear in her dreams, but she can tell from what he wears that he is not some modern-day Hawai'ian chieftain-to-be. She is dreaming of an ancient one._

"_This is where I train," he says as if it should be obvious, before quite unashamedly walking up to her and fingering the fraying cotton of her tank top. "What is this, a new sort of dress for the Aumakua? And what are the symbols on the front?" Much to her relief, he takes a few steps back, tilting his head as if looking at the rabbit printed on the front of the shirt at an angle will make it any easier to understand._

_But she does not care now why exactly she is dreaming of an odd boy from Ancient Hawai'i, because she is too preoccupied with asking: "What do you mean, the Aumakua?"_

_Yami stares at her with even more bemusement. "The Aumakua," he repeats, as if thinking that she has misheard him._

"_What is it?" Shizuka abruptly realizes that she is asking her own subconscious for answers, and suddenly feels like laughing at the complete ridiculousness of the situation._

_Yami pauses for a moment. "Are you sure that you are an ancestor spirit?"_

_Shizuka shakes her head, amused that this person from the past should think that she—she who is millenniums older than him—would be an ancestor spirit. "I'm not."_

"_Oh." His face closes down suddenly, his eyes turning cold with suspicion. "Then you are a vision from the future, and it is my job to guide you?"_

"_N—" She pauses then, because that question holds in it a grain of truth, and who is she to turn down advice, even if it is from herself? "Um... maybe."_

_He frowns—"How can you __**not **__know?"—and grasps at some pocket in his clothing to pull out a knife fashioned of sharpened obsidian, and all Shizuka can think for a moment is that Yugi would love to have that artifact—_

"_I don't know," she says, "but I don't."_

_He holds the knife up in front of her, and she sees that the suspicion has not left his expression, that he is staring at her like she is a bomb about to go off. "If you are an evil spirit, then leave," he warns. "I am Yami, grandson of Solomon, soon to be Ali'i 'Aimoku of Maui, and—"_

"_I'm not a spirit," she insists. "I'm a normal person, just like..." She falters then, because she was about to say 'just like you,' but he is not human, is he?_

_She does not know what part of her consciousness tells her that._

"_Is this a dream?" Yami asks._

"_Yes."_

"_Then... what is happening in your world?" he says._

"_I'm in Hawai'i, a tree spoke to me this morning, and I think my friend just made a part of a cliff collapse," she blurts, unsure of why she is telling him these things that are no more than sleep-induced hallucinations on her part; but this is a dream, and what harm can come of it?_

"_Your friend is a magic-worker, though you have no gods?" Yami says, so surprised that he lets the knife drop to his side._

_She frowns. "No."_

"_I think he is," he asserts, seeming to relax as he realizes that she does not intend to pollute his water or whatever he previously believed she would do. "Do you mean to say that though you are in Hawai'i, you know nothing of them? Are you a foreigner?"_

"_Yes," she admits. "But it's not so much a problem of distance as it is of time, I think..."_

_He looks shocked. "There are no gods in your time?"_

_She shakes her head. "No."_

"_Oh." There is a long pause as he turns the dagger in his hands, as if wondering what to do with it, before pressing the handle into her palm, and she is too surprised to do anything but close her fingers around it in response, skin brushing against his. "Take this."_

_"Why?"_

_He shrugs. "It is a family relic of sorts; do not use it often and be careful, because the blade is made of sharp stone that will cut through both the handle and the sheath with ease."_

_"...Thank you." Shizuka is confused._

_"You know nothing of this?" he asks, and she shakes her head. "Then I suppose I will have to teach you." He takes a breath, and then: "Do you know what _kapu_ is?"_

"_Restrictions?" she says tentatively, remembering something Yugi told her on the long plane ride to Hawai'i._

"_In a way," Yami says. "They are things or places we are not allowed to go, or touch, or look at. Most of them apply to greeting the Ali'i 'Aimoku, the great chieftains. Others apply to women."_

"_Why women?"_

_Yami shrugs, and picks up something from the ground; Shizuka has to resist the urge to laugh as she realizes he is holding a banana. "Women are not allowed to eat this."_

_Shizuka blinks. "What's wrong with that?"_

_Yami smiles for the first time. "Tell me, Shizuka, what does this look like?"_

_She flushes then, and she is not sure if she does so because of the implications of what he is saying or because of the way her name sounds from his lips._

* * *

"Yugi," Shizuka asked the next day, "what are the Aumakua?"

_Family gods, or deified ancestors,_ Yami had said. _We see them as omens and as protectors, who intervene in our lives to protect us from harm_.

Yugi straightened from where he had been prodding a cactus on the hillside and absently swiping as flies that landed on his arm, turning to her curiously. "Why do you ask?"

Shizuka, who had opened her mouth to answer, froze, transfixed.

How had she not realized it before? In all the hours that they had spent driving to Kilauea that morning and during the entirety of her dream, how had she not seen that Yugi looked _exactly_ like the person her subconscious had created that night—

No, not exactly, she realized. There was something different about their hair, and the way their eyes observed; Yugi's were older in years, yet somehow Yami's were more mature, more serious. Yugi's were the eyes of a student, and Yami's those of a warrior.

Shizuka thought with a start that she did not know which she liked better.

"Nothing—"

"No," Yugi interrupted, and the gentleness in his voice reassured her. "Shizuka... have you been seeing things—strange things? Inanimate objects speaking, moving, talking to you? Have you been dreaming too?"

"I'm not crazy," Shizuka protested, even as Yugi's eyes locked with hers and she knew that this was no joking matter.

"I'm not saying you are," he countered. "It's just that... Hawai'i is an interesting place, and perhaps because its history is so short, its ancient history often isn't spoken about. But that doesn't mean it's any less important, or that it's any less present here today. The Aumakua," he began, and Shizuka felt her lips moving, speaking Yami's words with him:

"—are family gods, or deified ancestors, seen as omens and as protectors, who intervene in our lives to protect us from harm."

Yugi didn't appear surprised, though his eyes seemed to unfocus and gaze past her, at the white sands that covered the entire coastline of Hawai'i. "See? You know this already."

Shizuka felt her heart lift with hope even as she thought that _no_—Yami was not real, had never been real, _could_ not be real. He was Yugi to her subconscious, a different version of him that she had made up somehow, because...

She felt her face heat with color as she realized that it might very well be her subconscious telling her that her feelings toward Yugi were more than simply friendly.

"I think I just heard you tell me that before, and I remembered," she said, quiet, resigned. "I'm really sorry about this—"

"About what?" Yugi said. "Shizuka, you believe me, don't you? You'd trust me about this at the least, since I've studied it more than you have?"

"No," she said, a little too quickly—a word of denial—before correcting herself. "I mean—yes, I trust you, but about this family guardian stuff... I don't think it's actually possible..." She trailed off uncertainly, not wishing to offend him.

Yugi shrugged, easing the tension, and sat back down on the rock beside her. "I'm a scientist too, in a way, and I admit that maybe I don't fully believe it either—as an anthropologist who has to study a country's religion as background for its culture, I try to stay unbiased. But sometimes, I find that I _do_ think they're true—do you believe in spirits?"

"Yes," Shizuka said, caught off guard but remembering the golden-red lanterns of Bon that she had sent floating down the river year after year. "The Japanese do."

"Then why don't you believe in _these_ spirits?"

"I don't know enough about them to judge," she hedged.

"You don't believe it," Yugi said simply. "And I don't blame you for that." He attempted a smile, but even she, inexperienced at reading emotions, could see that he was hurt.

"Wait," she said as he stood and dusted off his clothes, glancing up toward a higher level of the mountain, where Otogi appeared to be tossing rocks into the crater while Kaiba recorded something in his notebook. "You said you've been having dreams? What sort of dreams?"

He paused, turning back. "I dream about the gods," he said softly, "and of events of the past. I've seen Hina, Kahōʻāliʻi, Pa'ao, Kuula, and many others... even Pele once, I think, though I can't be sure."

"Oh." Shizuka could not conceal the disappointment in her voice; she had dreamed of a boy who looked like Yugi, not of gods and goddesses and old ceremonies that had been carried out for centuries before Cook had arrived. Her dreams were not the same; her dreams were not whatever he had been suggesting they were.

"If you want," Yugi said tentatively, "I can show you some of the books I have on Ancient Hawai'ian religion, to see if anything else seems familiar to you."

"No," Shizuka reassured him, standing quickly and grabbing her bag off the ground. Otogi had called something about slate down to her, and she seized his request as an excuse. "I'm sorry, but I need to help Otogi; knowing him, he'll probably start wandering around the crater and looking for signs of recent activity..."

She backed away before turning and beginning the hike up to Otogi's position, reminded of a similar scene the previous day—but this time Yugi was completely himself; Shizuka could see it in the terrible normalcy of his eyes.

"Hey, Shizuka," Otogi greeted as she ran up to him, intently wiping the edge of some stone he had found against his shirt to check for fragments of something. "What's that in your hand?"

She looked down with surprise to realize that she was clutching a wooden handle stuck into her pocket, and that it revealed the base of a black obsidian knife when she pulled it out and held it up to see. "A knife?"

Otogi smirked, sitting without heed on the ground and idly tossing the rock in his hand so that it hit Kaiba in the leg. "You know what it looks like to me? A di—"

"Otogi," Kaiba warned, and Shizuka could not help but laugh as she knelt by them and attempted to ignore the question of how the knife she had been given in a dream had found its way into real life.

* * *

Yami came to a stop by the place where he and Keith had fought the previous day, staring with some disappointment at the stone that stood overlooking the cliff. It was free of any marks of human presence, with nothing to indicate that his friend had been possessed then by Kahōʻāliʻi, god of the underworld. He frowned for a moment at the shard of obsidian on the ground where he had dropped it before, pausing for the first time to wonder how it had gotten there, in the midst of a cluster of trees that had been growing for years.

As he climbed upward toward the crater of Halemaʻumaʻu, home of Pele, he thought over the girl with the strange Aumakua clothing that he had seen in his dreams last night, who had spoken to him of the world of the future, where nobody knew of the gods who ruled the islands around Hawai'i anymore.

_Our land will come to an end_, he realized. _In how many years I do not know, but if Shizuka lives in a reflection of the present where the gods are present only in memory, then has their power faded too? Are they not real anymore, not able to control nature as they do now? She told me of other gods that control the entire world, not just Hawai'i—do they war with ours?_

His mind whirling with confusion, he almost did not notice as he reached the edge of the crater until he walked into the _kapu_ staffs that blocked it.

Quickly backtracking, he knelt before the crossed staffs, each with balls of white cloth tied around their tops, and murmured a quick prayer to Pele:

"My name is Yami, grandson of Solomon, who rules the island of Maui. I will be Aumakua after I die, my weapons trainer is a _kahuna _who communicates with Kahōʻāliʻi, and I have dreamed of a girl in the future who lives in a world where there are no gods. As the spirits are my witness, I swear that I mean no harm or disrespect by entering your home without the authority of a chief or first making an offering at the _heiau_ temple, but I have had no time to. I must speak to you."

Faster now, he rushed through the second part of the prayer, the part that the chieftains spoke.

"I ask now that you do not strike me down for entering your land, and that your reign over the islands past Hawai'i lasts for ten thousand years and longer into eternity. As my people stand behind me and I stand behind you, I ask your permission to enter."

He paused the expected ten seconds for a response before taking a deep breath and stepping past the _kapu_ staffs.

He remained frozen in that position for a long, long moment, fully expecting _something_ to happen, whether it was his death at Pele's hands or an eruption wrought of her anger, but nothing did.

Yami cracked one eye open to notice with a start that he was now in the exact spot where he and Shizuka had spoken the previous night, the edges of the crater rising up on all sides. There was no wind anymore, the walls of rock surrounding him enough to block any breeze that might have reached there, and he remembered with some surprise that Shizuka's hair had been fluttering lightly on some current in the air when they had met.

Taking a deep breath, he continued walking downward until he was sure he stood in the center of the crater, and waited.

The sun inched up a few degrees in the sky, and still he waited, sitting on the ground and playing with stones he found there, staring out at the desolate landscape and wondering idly how he would manage to return home in time.

Keith would be angry that he had missed lessons—but then again, Keith was now _kahuna_, and could no longer be his trainer.

"So," Yami said at last, as the sun was dropping below the horizon in a spread of orange-gold, "do I stand here and wait for the next few days?"

For a long moment, there was no answer, but _finally_—_"Tell me, Yami, grandson of Solomon, do you __**wish**__ to die?"_

Yami jumped at the sound of the voice, which seemed to rumble from deep within the volcano itself. "No," he said. _A leader must never show fear_. "I only want to speak to you."

"_What would be so urgent that you need to enter my home when you are not yet Aumakua or chieftain?"_

"The festival of Kaua'i is in a few days, as is the ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi."

"_And the day you were born too, is it not?"_

Yami blnked before he realized that it was true. "I forgot."

"_It is not wise to forget your coming of age, grandson of Solomon."_

"My coming of age is not for two more years," Yami said, confused.

"_Really. It used to be that chieftains could be crowned once they had been seventeen summers alive; has it changed so much now?"_

"And it will change more in the future," Yami said, seizing upon that opportunity to introduce the reason for his visit. "I have dreamed of a girl in the future whose present is run with the present right now, and I know that this does not happen by accident. There must be something important that will happen in the next few days, goddess, and I would be foolish, not humble, to think that it had nothing to do with me. But she told me that in however many years from now, there will be no more gods of the Big Island and the islands beyond, and that they will be replaced by more. I come here to warn you of this, and to ask your assistance in the events of the next few days."

There was silence as Yami awaited his answer, still sitting on the ground with his back to a rock behind him.

"_I know this."_

He sat straighter in surprise. "You do?"

"_The gods and those who have died have no more death in their future, grandson of Solomon, and as such we exist in eternity. Eternity has no time; I exist here, now, and also in the future that you speak of, and in the past, all at once."_

"I thought you were dead in the future," Yami said. "Shizuka told me so."

"_I have few iterations, little _kahuna_ both now and forever, but the other gods have many. And you know well what happens to those _kahuna_ who host the gods for too long, who welcome them too far into their being."_

"They become the gods," Yami whispered, remembering what his grandfather had told him."They lose their souls."

"_I do not choose _kahuna_ often,"_ Pele said. _"My power is too great to host within them, but the other gods are free to do so. And sometimes they choose too many, and their essence is split among two or more _kahuna_ in the same time."_

"Am I your _kahuna_?" Yami asked.

The volcano rumbled once more, violently this time, and Yami nearly toppled over onto his side. The sun was completely over the horizon now, the sky dark blue and cloudless. He squinted toward the opposite end of the crater and realized that there was smoke coming out in a plume there, rising up into the air.

"_No, you are not. But I will tell you this much: I have not used my power in many years, and I will do so soon. Warn your people, grandson of Solomon, because this display will be larger than the last."_

"But what about the ceremony—" Yami began somewhat desperately. _What about Shizuka? What if nobody listens, and my people will die because of it_—

The silence pressed in on his ears, and the smoke drifted over, choking him. He closed his eyes, crouching down to cover his nose and mouth with his hands, not even bothering to attempt escape; if Pele wished him dead, he would die with honor.

"Yami?"

Keith stood over him, his expression perplexed.

Yami closed his eyes again, willing himself to rid his mind of the image of Kahōʻāliʻi that he saw over his friend's face now, willing himself to realize that Keith was not Kahōʻāliʻi, no matter what. "Good evening," he said instead, and stood too.

"Why are you here so late?" Keith asked.

Yami decided then. The festival of Kaua'i was in a few days, his trainer had become a _kahuna_ who was a conduct for Kahōʻāliʻi, and Pele had warned him of a volcanic eruption. "I was in the Halemaʻumaʻu crater on Kilauea."

There was a terrible moment in which Keith said nothing and the sound of people rushing around in the village behind them was the only thing Yami could hear. "I will have to tell your grandfather of this," Keith said finally, quietly. "And he will have to tell Atem."

"I know," Yami said. "Do it."

* * *

_The next night, Shizuka barely has time to reassure herself of her surroundings before Yami grabs her arm and shakes her. "Shizuka!"_

_She turns, surprised. "Yami?"_

"_Yes," he says, before adding urgently, "Shizuka, tomorrow I may die."_

"_What are you—"_

"_**Listen to me**__," he insists. "Tomorrow I may die, and if so, then you will die too because your world runs parallel to mine. The ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi will be in a few days as well, and when it occurs in my time it will also occur in your time, so you must be wary of the night there."_

"_Wait, wait, what?"_

_Yami motions for her to be silent. "The ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi," he repeats, "the god of the underworld. There must be sacrifices made to him, and those who leave their houses after the sun has set are killed by the priests."_

"_Yami," Shizuka says, "I think you're forgetting something. We don't have priests in the time where I come from, so that can't happen."_

"_It can," Yami says. "You may not have priests, but you have a _kahuna_."_

"_A _kahuna_?" Shizuka says slowly, unsure of the word's significance. "What's that?"_

"_They are mediums for contact with the gods," Yami explains. "They are often possessed by them for communication, and sometimes have powers of healing because of that connection."_

_Shizuka shakes her head. "There aren't any of those either."_

"_There are," Yami says. "You told me of a boy, your friend, who acted strangely yesterday and spoke to you of death."_

_Shizuka nods._

"_Did he call himself anything?"_

"_No." She frowns as she tries to recall the conversation. "But he called me something... Hina, I think?"_

"_Hina?" Yami says. "Hina is goddess of the moon and of death." There is a pause as he realizes the implications of her statement. "So you are a _kahuna_ too? You are a medium for speaking with Hina in your world where none believe in our gods? I thought you said—"_

"_No," Shizuka interrupts. "I'm not a _kahuna_, Otogi's not a _kahuna_, and you're..." She falters for a moment, unwilling to say it, but forces the words to come tumbling out of her mouth. "You're not real, you're just a dream, no matter what Yugi may say; this isn't real, this is just a dream, and I'm going to wake up and return to Japan and forget all of this." The next sentence is even harder to say, but she manages. "You're just my version of Yugi."_

"_Yugi?" Yami echoes. "Who's that?"_

_Shizuka buries her face in her hands, letting her hair fall around her head so that Yami cannot see that she is struggling not to cry. "I don't know," she admits. "I don't know."_

_She feels his hand tentatively touch her wrist, and she tells herself again and again that this is not real, that Yami is not real, that he is Yugi through and through. "Shizuka," he says, and she attempts to block out the sound of his voice, "I am real."_

"_You're not." It is uncertainly said, and she hates the way the sentence seems to shiver in the air before fading to nothing._

_He gently pries her arms away and lifts her chin up with a finger. "I __**am**__."_

_Their faces are no more than two inches apart, their breathing halted for the moment as they both absorb the situation. Shizuka feels her right hand clasped in his, his fingers reaching up to hold her chin._

_Yami leans forward, kisses her, and they both breathe out. As the kiss drags on, Shizuka realizes that Yami's eyes are the same color as Yugi's, and she cries, tears running down her face and tasting faintly of salt when they reach her lips._

* * *

"Hey, Shizuka." Yugi looked pleasantly surprised to see her knock on the door of his hotel room the next morning.

"I need to tell you something," she began, uncertain of how exactly to approach the topic.

His expression grew more hopeful as he took a book from on his desk and flipped through it. "Do you want to learn more about Ancient Hawai'i, then?"

"No," she said, hating the guilt that froze her actions and made her stomach sick at the thought of what she was going to do.

"Oh." There was that hidden disappointment in his voice again, and she tried not to flinch as she wondered, _If I don't believe in Ancient Hawai'i, and he does, then who's right and who's wrong?_

"I don't think it's real," she said in a rush. "Because—" And here she stopped, because real or not, there was something awkward about telling a boy that she had just dreamed of kissing him, and odder still to confess that what he thought were dreams of the past were actually messages from her subconscious.

"Because?" Yugi prompted, setting the book down.

"Because," she said again, and could not think of how to continue. Instead, she glanced to where he was sitting on the chair, leaned down and braced herself against the desk, and kissed him.

Kissing him did not feel like kissing Yami, but she could close her eyes and imagine it.

Shizuka wondered, suddenly, if that counted as infidelity.

* * *

Yami knelt on the ground as the silence stretched on around him, and he could feel the eyes of Atem's advisers on him, watching in silence.

"Who are you?"

"Yami," he said, "grandson of Solomon, Aliʻi ʻAimoku of Maui."

"Why are you here, grandson of Solomon?"

"The ceremony of Kahō'āli'i is tomorrow," Yami began, "and—"

Atem interrupted him. "I was under the impression that you had been sent to me for breaking the _kapu_ and entering Halemaʻumaʻu."

Murmurs swept through the crowd, and Yami gritted his teeth as he kept his eyes firmly fixated on the ground; it was _kapu_ to look an Ali'i 'Aimoku in the eye. "Yet I am still alive now, so I would imagine that if Pele judged that I should survive, you would concur with that judgment." He had to smile to himself at the pause before Atem spoke again; he had put the chieftain on the spot now, forced him to either withdraw his sentence or speak against the gods.

"Even so," Atem said coolly, "you have broken a law. And since you have done so, law compels me to address that."

"What will you do, then?" Yami said, unable to stop himself from snapping. "You have already taken my father and attempted to take my inheritance; what more can you punish me with?"

"It would be wise not to speak to an Ali'i 'Aimoku that way," Atem said quietly. "As for breaking _kapu_, your punishment will be—"

"_Punishment?"_ Yami said, and his head inadvertently rose to glare straight ahead when he did; it was only with difficulty that he stopped himself from rising to his feet and meeting Atem's eyes. He felt someone by his side—a guard, no doubt—push him back down. "How can you think of punishment now, when all the islands you rule are in danger?"

"Danger?" Atem said. "I do not see any danger."

"That's because you haven't looked," Yami accused, no longer caring. He might not have been _kahuna_, but he was still Ali'i in training, grandson of a great leader and taught by _kahuna _other than Keith. And he would be Aumakua after he died; Shizuka had shown him that much. "We, as Ali'i, the nobility, have our connections to the gods passed down to them through blood. Surely you have felt that there is something that is not right within the lands of your rule; surely you have dreamed too."

"Dreamed?" Atem said. "Dreamed of what?"

"I have dreamed of the future," Yami said. "I have dreamed of the Big Island years from now, when there are no more Ali'i and none who believe in the gods. I have dreamed of a girl whose world runs parallel to mine, and with the magic of the blood that my ancestors gave me, I know that our paths will converge and then split on the festival of Kaua'i, during the ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi."

"And I have dreamed of the past."

"So you know," Yami said. "You _know_ that something will happen tomorrow, and yet you do nothing about it?"

"My dreams have told me nothing of danger," Atem said. "And if you are dreaming of _girls _who tell you these things, then that is reason enough to believe that your dreams are not real."

Yami recalled suddenly Shizuka's words from his dream: _You're not real, you're just a dream... and I'm going to wake up in Japan and forget this._ "They _are _real," he protested.

There was silence, then—"Look at me, Yami, grandson of Solomon."

Yami could not hold back the laugh that escaped his mouth. "You are asking me to break _kapu_?"

"Look at me." It was a command.

Yami obeyed, and he froze.

Looking at Atem was like looking into a still pond; it was like looking at himself. They were identical enough to be twins—same hair, same face, same mouth, and Yami felt his stomach twist sickeningly as he wondered what sort of joke the gods were playing on him—

Then he saw Atem's eyes, near-red, the color of the feathers of the Akepa bird, the color of Shizuka's hair. But despite the warmth of their hue, the emotion within them was stony, cold, and he realized that Atem did not believe him. "I have spoken with Pele," he whispered, finally, desperate. _A king must always place his people before himself_.

Atem's eyebrows rose, and there was that cool disdain that seemed to permeate his every action—_A king must never show weakness._ "Somehow, I doubt that."

* * *

"Grandfather," Yami said, forehead nearly pressed to the ground—but out of respect this time, not ceremony. "We need to tell the people of the Big Island to leave, and warn the people of Kaua'i to take extra caution during the ceremony of Kahō'āli'i."

"Why is that?" Solomon asked, and Yami visibly relaxed when he realized that there would be no chastising for his breaking of two _kapu_.

"I have had dreams of the future," he said. "And you have told me that because we are of the Ali'i bloodline, the gods are more inclined to speak to us than they would be to others. I have dreamed of a girl who lives in a time when there is no more belief in our gods, but her time is for now running the same course as ours, and the ceremony of Kahōʻāliʻi will occur there as it occurs here. This does not happen for no reason, grandfather—there must be something important that will happen tomorrow night, the night of the festival, and it would be murder to stand back and let it be."

"Are you sure of this?" Solomon asked finally.

Yami nodded. "I am."

"Then I will do my best." There was a pause, then: "Stand up, Yami."

He obeyed, straightening and looking his grandfather in the eye—there was no breaking of _kapu_ here; they were family and exempt from the rule. "Yes, grandfather?"

"I have heard that you think you are Aumakua."

Yami froze, his mind racing as he attempted to remember the conversations of the past days. "I don't remember saying that."

"You don't have to say it for me to know it," Solomon reminded him. "And I know why you think so, but that does not mean it is correct."

"Then what am I?" Yami asked. "If I dream of a girl who says she is Aumakua, and if I am her in this time, then how can I not be Aumakua after I die? If I can communicate with her, in life, though I am dead in her world... wait..."

Solomon laughed, and Yami had to smile as he sat on a tree stump that served as a chair by his grandfather's side. "You may be Aumakua, but that does not mean you are _only_ Aumakua."

Yami frowned at him, confused. "What else could I be?"

Instead of answering, Solomon said, "Are your life and the girl's running _exactly_ parallel, with no differences?"

"No," Yami admitted. "Her friend who is a _kahuna_ of that time has not threatened to kill her, nor has he told her his name. And... I don't know if she believes that this is real, since she has none of our gods in her time..."

Solomon nodded. "Pele has told you the gods are immortal, and that to them, time does not exist. And you also know that those who hold the gods in their souls for too long disappear, so that only the gods reside in their bodies. But if they are immortal, and eternity is the same as one second, then wouldn't the _kahuna _always be nothing but the gods who speak through them?"

"I don't know," Yami said.

Solomon smiled kindly. "It is a strange concept to grasp, I know. But think of this tomorrow night, Yami: Are the _kahuna_ truly people, or simply fragments of the gods?"

* * *

"_Shizuka!"_

_She does not turn quickly this time; she knows too well who this is. "I need to stop dreaming about you."_

"_Yes," Yami agrees—of course, it is always Yami. "You need to wake up and warn your friends about tonight; do you remember what tonight is?"_

_Despite herself, Shizuka answers. "The festival of Kaua'i, and the ceremony of __Kahō'āli'i_, god of the underworld."

"_You know what happens during that festival, right?" Not waiting for her answer, he rushes on. "Before, it used to be that the priests only chose those who left their homes as sacrifices; now Atem is angry, and he has threatened to take them without care for that old tradition."_

"_So?" Shizuka says softly, hating the way Yami's hand on her shoulder falters at the word. "Even if you're real, that's happening in your world, not in mine."_

"_Your world and mine run parallel, Shizuka!" She flinches at the anger in his tone, glad that her back is turned to him so he cannot see. "You know this! And I have been warned by Pele herself that her volcano will erupt soon; I know through her that something is going to happen tonight, that our worlds will converge tonight."_

_She shakes her head violently, red-brown hair falling forward to cover her face. "No, no. It's not happening. It's not real?"_

"_Why not?" Yami demands, exasperated. "Why are you so determined that this is nothing more than a dream?"_

"_Because I'm a scientist and I know that Kilauea isn't going to erupt. There haven't been any of the preliminary signs—no earthquakes, doming, nothing..."_

"_This 'science' does not explain everything," Yami says. "I do not know what it is, but nothing can explain everything that exists."_

"_I don't know," Shizuka whispers, wrenching herself out of Yami's grip. "I don't know why I don't believe you, but I don't."_

"_Listen to me, at least," Yami insists. "Don't go outside your room tonight, and don't sleep. I swear that I'm not lying to you, Shizuka. Just... please be careful."_

"_I don't need you to tell me that," she says._

"_Promise me you will be careful," he repeats._

"_I will," she says, the words falling from her lips without her wishing them to, and the volcano fades around her—_

* * *

—and she woke up.

The room was silent. It was cold, the air conditioning of the hotel blowing onto her skin and making her shiver, and completely dark. She squinted into the blackness briefly, attempting to see what it was that woke her up, and instead saw the red digits of the clock on the nightstand displaying 1:56.

She had been asleep for less than two hours.

Shizuka sighed and rolled to her left, pressing the switch on the table that turned the lamp by her bed on.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, she tried again, flipping it back and forth and growing increasingly worried when there was no result. "Great," she said, and she didn't know why exactly she was speaking when there was nobody to hear her. "I can't sleep, it's the middle of the night, and tomorrow I'm going back to Japan..."

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, planning to see if there was a slot next to the door that she was supposed to put her room key in so that the electricity would work, but froze before she could take a step.

There was no carpet beneath her feet.

She jumped when she felt water wash against her skin, whirling in time to see a ring of torches flare up in a cluster of houses far up the beach, glowing orange-red in the night, and she began to run toward it, sand slipping against her legs.

She thought she could see the outline of a boy there, black against the light, standing as the torches went up and watching. His _hair_—she recognized it; she had seen it too much lately, on Yugi and Yami alike—"Yami?" she called as she made her way up, ignoring the way shards of seashells pricked the soles of her feet, ignoring the fact that _this was not real_. "Yami, is that you?"

The figure whirled as if he could hear her despite the distance between them and the crackling of the flames, but she could not see his face.

"Wait!" she said as he walked away, his shadow melding into the darkness of the houses that surrounded him. "No, wait for me—"

Somehow she struggled her way through the bushes that grew further up the beach. Her feet hit dirt instead of sand and she sped up; she thought she could see Yami standing behind a house, head peering around a corner and holding a stick—another torch?—in his hand.

She took another step, and she flew back, up into the air and down the slope of the shore again, and before she hit the water she thought, absurdly, of a computer's mechanical female voice saying:

"_This file already exists. Would you like to replace it?"_

With a gasp, she returned to her hotel room, head spinning and legs still covered with sand. Her heart was pounding as if she had really been running for the past few minutes, and the backs of her arms were scratched from the bushes.

She took a deep breath, attempting to calm herself, and sat back down.

There was a knock on her door.

"Shizuka?" Yugi's voice called out from behind him. "Can I come in?"

"Y—" she started to say, but paused abruptly as she remembered Yami's words: _Don't go outside your room tonight, and don't sleep. Please be careful._

The knock repeated, Otogi's voice joining in. "Come on, Shizuka. Kaiba's being a jerk."

She could not resist the laugh that burst from her at the comment; it was so like Otogi to blame everything on Kaiba and use it as leverage against her. Rising from her bed again, she only made it two more steps before there was a whistle like wind rushing rapidly past her ears, and then she was pressed against the wooden wall of a house, staring directly into the eyes of an elderly man.

"Who are you?" she whispered, wondering suddenly if he could even see her.

He looked back calmly, folding his hands and glancing at the door of the house. "I am Solomon, Ali'i 'Aimoku of Maui."

"Where's Yami?" she blurted before she could stop herself, not daring to move for fear that if she did, this scene would disappear.

He did not answer. "Atem is looking for you."

"Atem?" she said. "Who's Atem?"

"He is Ali'i 'Aimoku of the Big Island."

"Why is he looking for me?"

Solomon shrugged. "Because you do not belong here, and because Yami is gone."

"Where is this?" Shizuka said, though she already knew the answer.

"You are in the village at the foot of Kilauea, on the night of the festival of Kahōʻāliʻi."

"Then why did Yami leave, if whoever leaves will be killed?"

Solomon looked at her with something like approval. "Because a true king puts his people before himself."

The door burst open, and the world exploded.

Shizuka collapsed against the door of her hotel room, slumping to the carpeted floor and breathing in the smell of the detergent-cleansed blankets and sheets. It was a startling contrast to the smell of the ocean that had permeated the air of the village by Kilauea, and she realized with a start that she had not felt the difference in temperature and humidity although she had been outside.

_It's just a dream. It's not real. It's just a dream._

Her breaths were coming in jerks and stops, and as the air conditioning restarted with a rumble and a gust of air, she shivered again. She imagined the cold creeping across the floor of the room, a wave of ice that spread like growing frost, and curled up against the wood as if she could escape it.

The knock startled her, making her jerk straight and freeze, listening. Her breaths sped up, sharp and panicked, and she did not trust her voice to ask who was there.

"Shizuka."

She recognized the voice. "Yami?"

Something red glinted in front of her, and she pressed herself to the door again, folding her legs under her. She thought of closing her eyes and pretending that nothing was there—would not knowing be better than seeing it, whatever _it_ was?

A torch flared up, red eyes glared at her, and she screamed.

"Who are you?"

She shuddered, realizing she was in a headlock and being restrained by some man who had the cold stone blade of an axe pressed to her neck. "Shizuka," she said. "My name is Shizuka."

"I have not heard of you," the man said.

To her horror, she felt her mouth move, forcing air out of her lungs, forming words that came out in a whisper because her vocal cords were silent. _"Yes, you have."_

The man dropped her as if she had burned him, though he spun her around so that they were face-to-face and she could see the pale blue of his eyes in the glow of the fires behind them. Slowly, his mouth spread into a smile, forced and strained, and he tipped his head forward in a sort of drunken salute. The rest of his body remained immobile. _"Hina."_

The whisper came from her lips again, and Shizuka felt like she would choke; her lungs were empty, and she could not breathe. _"__Kahō'āli'i_. Today is your day."

The man stumbled forward a few steps, like a puppet controlled by an inexperienced child. _"I will make the best of it, I assure you."_

His head leaned lower, arms jerking up slightly to pin her in place, and she could only stand and close her eyes as came closer, closer—

—"Shizuka!" The spell broke, and she tripped and almost fell in her haste to escape. "Yami?"

"Shizuka!" She whirled to the left, saw a teenager with black hair and green eyes staring back at her—no, not her; he was staring at Keith. "Otogi?"

Otogi took a step forward and started running too, brushing past her without so much as a glance and not stopping as the distance between him and Keith got smaller, smaller—

They both disappeared.

A hand touched her arm, and she turned once more to see red eyes staring into hers. "You!" the man said viciously, and then his voice echoed like hers had. _"You!"_

"_Me,"_ she heard herself say in the voice that was not hers. _"I am you and you are me."_

"_You don't belong here,"_ he snapped, accusing.

She didn't move. _"I belong everywhere."_

He shoved her away, but somehow she followed the backwards motion of his body, falling flat against him and knocking them both to the ground. The breath went out of them both in a huff, the impact resonating within her bones and continuing on and one; for a moment, Shizuka thought she would shatter.

The ground beneath them rumbled, shook, and orange light lit up the sky.

She fell _through _the door.

Her head in the hallway, the rest of her body back in her hotel room, she nearly hit Yugi in the legs but jerked back at the last minute to find that she could not return inside. He stared down at her. "...Shizuka?"

"Yugi," she gasped, pushing against the floor in a vain attempt to allow her arms to return to the opposite side of the door but slipping and crumpling against the carpet once more. "Help me..."

He leaned down, concerned. "Why are you like this?"

She wondered suddenly why he was so calm. "I don't know, but it's not very comfortable."

He laughed, grasping her arms and tugging them tentatively. "What should I do?"

She shrugged, feeling lightheaded. "Pull?"

He sat on the carpet, and—_in a rain of orange and gold, the volcano erupts_—Yugi's lips were moving, but she could not hear. The lava was pouring down the side of the mountain, searing fire through the trees, but she did not care.

She saw the fire, man-made, in the center of the village, saw the ring of soldiers there with the man with the crimson eyes at their head.

"This is the ceremony of Kahō'āli'i," he said, and his voice carried clearly despite the crackling of fires and the distant roar of the volcano behind him. "Who speaks for the gods?"

The burly man with the pale blue eyes, the man who had captured Shizuka, stepped up. "I do."

Otogi followed him as if in a trance, staring directly into the fire without so much as a blink. "So do I."

"Who is the sacrifice?" the leader asked.

Solomon walked into the circle. "I am."

Shizuka felt a lurch inside her as the lava crested over the side of the mountain and continued pouring down, as the fire flared to blackness and the only light that illuminated the scene was Pele's eruption, Kilauea's eruption, as Yami's yell echoed from somewhere high above them:

"_NO!"_

The leader's head snapped up. _"Yes."_

Somebody shoved Shizuka forward, into the circle with everyone else, and she felt the eyes of the watchers on her but cared only for one thing. It was Yami's worry, Yami's fear pouring into her and suffusing her body, making her whisper into the utter silence as he did: _"She is building the island."_ Then, louder, screaming into the still night, _"Run; she is building the island!"_

"Who?" the leader asked, quiet.

It was not her voice that spoke. _"You **know **who."_

The lava continued down, the woman's face carved on the mountain smiled at her, the fire flared and the noise rushed around her ears in a blur of darkness and gold and purple—

—the night was black around her, still and silent and so very cold. She floated there, waiting for something to shatter the calmness, for someone to say her name and wake her up. Faces flickered around her.

_Shizuka?_ Otogi, eyes green, not possessed, pale blue blinking in the background. _You don't belong here_. Solomon now, completely serious. _Who are you?_ Yami-not-Yami, with eyes of crimson and that stiff, formal bearing that suffused every inch of his being—not Yami, but part of _something_ that Yami was too.

_Shizuka._ Yugi now, hand in hand with Yami-not-Yami, smiling at her.

_Shizuka_. Finally, Yami, worried and weary with the duties of a king who was not yet a king. _Is this real, Shizuka?_

_I don't know,_ she answered.

_Do you want it to be real?_

_Yes._

"_Stop."_

Only Yugi and Yami and Yami-not-Yami were left with her now, standing in silence and waiting too. Their lips moved in synchronization as the voice spoke, as if it were speaking _through_ them. "_You are not real. You are me."_

The rest of them faded, leaving Shizuka alone.

"_You too are me, child. You are all me."_

"I'm not." Shizuka mouthed the words, then started because no sound would come out. Frowning, she tried harder, attempting to speak, to scream, but she could hear nothing.

"_I have made a mistake. You have lived too close together, and your times have collided. There are no survivors of this; you will all die."_

"No."

"_Yes."_

"No!"

"_Yes."_

"This is real!" Shizuka burst out, her voice rasping against her throat and hurting, but she was so relieved to hear it that she could not stop, that she let the words come pouring out of her mouth, frantic. "I'm real, Yami's real, Yugi's real, and _you_—_are_—_not_!"

"_You are afraid of losing control. You are afraid of disappearing. But the four of you are different fragments of myself, for I am everything, and there are more fragments than just that. The moon rises nearly every night, and different sections of it show each time... how full is the moon right now, Shizuka?"_

"I don't know."

"_Think. Remember."_

"I don't know!"

"_There is no moon tonight. This is __Kahō'āli'i's reign."_

Shizuka's hand fisted by her side, and to her surprise, she felt the wooden handle of a knife there—the obsidian knife, black as night, that Yami had given her. "Why are you manifested in _them_, then, if you're female and they're not?"

"_You are my only female incarnate, Shizuka."_

"Then you are not female without me," she said.

"_I am not."_

"And there is _kapu_ for females too..." Her words were hurried in an attempt to finish her reasoning before the goddess—Hina—could catch on, her fingers slipping the knife out of its sheath. She held it in two trembling hands, fingers shaking with fear, but she forced herself to remain calm.

_Tell me, Shizuka, what does this look like?_

_You know what it looks like to me? A di—_

She took a deep breath.

_A true king puts his people before himself._

_**This**__ is for Yami._

Shizuka tipped her head back, jammed the knife down her throat, and screamed as loudly as she could.

* * *

**End**

* * *

A _geodesic_ is the shortest distance between two points on the Earth's surface, or a curved 3D line, and a reference to the fact that although two lines may never meet, they are not necessarily parallel.

Please note that I screwed with Hawaiian mythology a whole lot here. Also, props to you if you know who the tree at the beginning was.  
Footnotes: safaat-keruth .livejournal .com /2612 .html

_**Thank you**_ for reading! _**Reviews**_ are wonderful; _**concrit**_ is loved. Review, please? :)


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